Vietcong by Games

This is most apparent when the scripting breaks. You'll have to send them on ahead as cannon fodder anyway, since the damage model is so unforgiving, and you'll get to watch as they fire freely at the doorjamb or table the enemy is hiding behind (you can't order to them to fire on your target, or on your command, or anything of that nature) until they finally get lucky and wing a pixel on the guy's right ear. Pterodon, working with Illusion Softworks, took a more authentic approach to jungle warfare -- a place where ambushes were constant, the enemy difficult to pick out much of time, and death waiting around every corner. Every time you take damage, your maximum health is reduced a few notches, to the point where you might end a mission with half the health you started with -- assuming you can get past the almost as unforgiving save point system.

There's a lot of aggravating death in between you and the average checkpoint. You'll have enough room for a knife, a sidearm, two rifles, some grenades, and a health pack, which should be enough. You can pick up weapons you find on the ground, but you won't be able to carry an armory on your back. You'll also notice that they can do some special moves that you can't, particularly a diving roll that would have come in handy many times.



I think the game's biggest problem is that it feels a little rough around the edges. It was the NVA's big push south, just when the American military was at its most confident, and the game portrays it with appropriate hairiness.



What you'll notice right off is that, visually, not much has changed in two and a half years since the original Vietcong came out, and the engine, already a few steps behind back then, looks decidedly dated now. On the other hand, it's quite nice that they don't come running blindly at you, guns ablaze. Your primary enemy will be the game's performance and how quickly a few rounds from any weapon at medium range will usually kill you and force you to start from the last checkpoint. I really would have liked being able to split them up into teams, or controlling individual troops, or telling them to simply fire on my target. Eventually, he got out of neutral, only to drift across the room to where the escort script was supposed to end. You'll automatically pick up magazines on the ground, and you can also strip ammo from found weapons. Fortunately, you'll commonly have one team member who can heal you (health packs are rare commodities) and another who can supply you ammo. After what appeared to be a glut of World War II shooters, several developers tried their hand at Vietnam, with mixed results. And Vietcong 2 doesn't quite cut it in that department.



In another section, my taking an alternate route to a destination caused the enemy to not show up. Instead, team commands are quite limited, and their pathfinding is troublesome in tight areas. And you'll be able to order your team to focus their fire and move to points you've flagged a la Brothers in Arms. The enemy is also not afraid to whittle away at your health with surprisingly accurate pot shots. That the game stretches across five CDs must be a testament to the extensive voice acting and music, not the textures or character models. Thankfully, they don't throw grenades, or else I would be in a world of hurt.



The other side of the coin is that it only takes a few rounds to take out the average VC or NVA trooper, as long as you aim high. They'll start out following you by default, and certain scripted encounters will force them to get in line behind you, but once you give one of your two squad commands, they'll stop following, forcing you to tediously flag point after point like a rock climber as you progress through the area. The AK-47 is probably the best all-around assault rifle, and you'll have a scoped M-14 that packs quite a punch. They're quite good at it too, crouching behind doors and unloading on you when you get too close. It just isn't very easy on the eyes, suffers from puzzling performance issues, has rudimentary team controls, and some scripting bugs.

Closing Comments
Vietcong isn't a bad game. Combined with the relatively strenuous damage model (with the inability to fully heal) and a peppering of sluggishness, the aggravation level is a little too high. VC2 takes a page from Counter-Strike and allows the enemy to shoot you through the fringe of a door or other obstacle, which is annoying when you don't know where the shots are coming from. Since you'll be the only guy in the game using grenades, they can hang back and camp until doom's day. And there are times when this gets extremely tedious, because the enemy is a lot smarter at indoor fighting than your team is, and when they get clustered together, and you have to go through the building to get to your next objective… well, you'll have your work cut out for you, because that next checkpoint probably won't kick in until after you've completed the entire gauntlet.



Thankfully, your arsenal is varied and you'll get your health back at the next phase of a mission. Textures are poor, interactivity is low, and particle effects are relatively rudimentary. I had to circle back around to the entry point the developer wanted to me to go through. In one section, I was being led to an alternative route, and my escort stopped dead for about thirty seconds while I danced around trying to find some invisible trigger. The enemy AI is relatively smart. You can get killed by small-arms fire in less than a second, and you can't fully heal yourself. The game has so many quirks that just one more, and a benign one at that, isn't really a bother.

Your team AI also doesn't seem to adapt well to indoor environments, particularly if they're fighting against multiple elevations. That the game took two and a half years to get through its development cycle and still doesn't look or play especially well must be a testament to how difficult it is to make a pleasing shooter these days. A few ports and expansion packs later, and Pterodon is at it again with a more urban-focused sequel taking place during the Tet Offensive in 1968. He'll give you rounds for whatever weapon you have, even the VC and NVA weapons, which is a little odd, but I didn't let it bother me. There's some scope drift, which I actually prefer, and an initial blur when you fire, so you're not superhuman.

And since the enemy does a good job of finding and using its cover, the fire fights are fairly well balanced, except for your teammates, who tend to get in your line of fire and tend to walk blindly into dangerous spots. Unfortunately, you can't order individual troops or tell them to stay back or follow you. And it still doesn't run well, with particularly noticeable sluggishness at the beginning of medium-range firefights.

With the damage model being the most unforgiving I can remember, this is not a good thing. They don't always duck low enough behind an obstacle, but that's about the worst of it. Unfortunately, the final product had some performance issues, despite not having cutting-edge visuals. Then the VC appeared out of the woodwork, from behind boxes and doors that were empty only moments before.